‘Bayelsa is Nigeria’s best kept investment secret’

Bayelsa State Governor Seriake Dickson, in this interview granted Africa Today’s Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Kayode Soyinka, explains why he has changed the tenor of governance in his state for posterity. Having served the state for more than six years now, he recounts his achievements in education, health and infrastructure and what his government has in store for investors, local and foreign. Excerpts:

An unorthodox politician

Yes, did I come into office with anger? Yes, I came with plenty of anger and also plenty of fire in my belly to redress, in a radical manner, the decades of underdevelopment and neglect, and should I say, bad governance that I met on ground when I became governor.

Those were some of the things I addressed in my inaugural speech. So, I came very prepared because I have been involved. I have been in the trenches in the politics of the state, and in the politics of the Niger Delta for quite some time before becoming the governor. I was Attorney-General here; I was state chairman of the party here. I served in the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) here. I was involved in the Ijaw nationalism at all levels-in the youth side and also with the elders.

I was the legal adviser and one of the chief strategists of the Ijaw movement. So, I am a product of the Ijaw establishment, product of the Ijaw movement and product of the Niger Delta movement. And also, I have been involved in a lot of progressive causes in our country in my own very quiet way.

So, I knew firsthand the challenges of our people. I knew their aspirations. I had a clear understanding of what should have been done. I also had a clear understanding of what had not been done, and what, therefore, could be done, and I was in a hurry to get those things done. My inaugural address, if you read it now, six years after, it’s as if I wrote it today because I was very clear about the issues I wanted to address and the way forward.

For example, in that address, I talked about the reform of the governance culture, I talked about fundamental paradigm shift in the way governance should be done in the state, and the need for everyone to subscribe to those ideals that I brought with me – including myself!

I made it clear that education was going to receive prime attention; it was going to be topmost priority for me. If at that time you asked me what would be my three topmost priorities in office, I would say education, education, education, and I made it clear.

In that same inaugural address, I declared an emergency in education. I also made it clear that we were not going to play politics with security, and that I was going to pursue our agenda of Ijaw nationalism in the positive sense.

So, everything I have been doing in the past six years is encapsulated in that address. I finally ended by saying that after me, I was sure that by the grace of God and the support of the people, this state and the Ijaw nation would not be the same again.

Six years in the saddle

I can say looking back six years after those ideals were promulgated, it has been six years of hard work by me and my team; six years of sacrifice, I can confidently say. Majority of the people of this state monitoring the affairs of Bayelsa, and who know the state, would also agree that those objectives have been largely achieved. As a matter of fact, a number of people feel that I have over-achieved and asked how I have been able to establish stability relatively, how we brought down the crime rates, how we have been able to reverse our negative indices in health care, education, in infrastructure and all of that. But I will also be the first to admit that the state is not where I will want it to be yet. I think that is the normal thing to say; to always have an ideal to strive for.

In that context, I always tell a lot of people that, yes, a lot of ground has been covered but we are not yet where I would want the state to be. And, of course, that shouldn’t be surprising, and it should not, in anyway, detract from the great work that we have done. That is to acknowledge the fact that states and nations are not built in four years, or in eight years, or even in one’s lifetime by any one government – it’s a work in progress, from government to government, from governor to governor, from one team to the other. But no one can deny the fact that this state has changed.

Endorsement given you and Bayelsa State by former President Olusegun Obasanjo

First of all, I would like to thank former President Obasanjo for accepting to come and for all the generous endorsements and words of encouragement and advice that he gave. He has left a very positive impression in the minds of everybody as to what we are doing.

Yes, President Obasanjo’s endorsement lifted our spirit – yes, clearly, especially when you realise that in this terrain you don’t get such endorsements and an acknowledgment of good performance in office easily. One of the challenges in trying to uplift an underdeveloped, underprivileged, oppressed and neglected society such as Bayelsa State that has suffered for so many decades, if not centuries, is sometimes the disconnect between the people and their leaders, and sometimes people don’t even see the good side of things you do because of the level of literacy, poverty, and deprivation.

In this environment, people still live in the Stone Age because of the difficulties of providing them with access. A combination of all this makes it impossible for government to be positively appreciated. So, there is a prevailing negative political culture where even leaders don’t openly appreciate good things that are going on, in addition to the usual constant political squabbles.

This kind of endorsement coming from one of the most powerful brands in our country, in Africa, all over the world – and President Obasanjo is known as someone who doesn’t flatter people, who speaks his mind, who writes letters also, so he is known for speaking and writing his mind – is good. Here he came, went through our programmes and was very satisfied and said so openly. We are very grateful to him for coming and for the words of encouragement.

Investment and economic summits

Well, let me tell you, Bayelsa is Nigeria’s best-kept investment secret. And our policy as a government is to open Bayelsa State up for investment. And that is why we are embarking on an aggressive investment, infrastructure agriculture and tourism campaign.

And with security, we are providing a stable and secure environment. This is vital to us and we have done remarkably well with that. By the way, everyone knows that Bayelsa is one of the safest states in the country. It is the most stable states in the Niger Delta. Why are we doing all of this? It is to bring the world to Bayelsa and take Bayelsa to the world. That is why we have the heliport, which we have just unveiled, and we also have the airport, which will be inaugurated and put to use this year.

So, people will no longer be coming here and landing at Port Harcourt International Airport. They will be able to fly from anywhere in the world and land here directly in Yenagoa. So, we are doing that. And we are seriously attracting investors. We have a package of incentives, which our investment promotion agency is in a better position to engage depending on the area people are looking at. But if you are looking for investment in the area of creating an aviation hub in Nigeria, in the Gulf of Guinea, Bayelsa is the place to be. If you are looking for investment in aqua culture, Bayelsa is the place to be. If you are looking for big time palm estates to be such as Malaysia, Bayelsa is the place to be. If you are looking for rice plantations such as in Vietnam and Thailand, with our vegetation Bayelsa is where you can easily turn to. We have fertile land, so Bayelsa is good for agriculture.

With the opportunities we have just opened up in the medical field, Bayelsa is poised to lead in the area of medical tourism in Nigeria. And with some of the world-class medical facilities we have here, we can compete with any hospital anywhere on the continent. So, Bayelsa is ready for business, but it is Nigeria’s best-kept secret.

People go somewhere else; they don’t know that there are some other places to explore. In Bayelsa, we have oil and gas, we have energy and power because God has blessed us with abundant natural gas. Bayelsa is therefore an unavoidable and compulsory investment destination here in Nigeria.

Industrial Park project

The work is on, and we are working very hard. A land has been provided, and survey has been concluded. Very soon, clearing will start. We are looking for partners to help us work on it. It will be one of the most suitable and profitable places to put investment and business in because we have access to gas right there, which will convert to power.

So, if there is any state in Nigeria that will have the capacity very soon to deliver 24-hour power for manufacturers, it is going to be Bayelsa and that will be cheering news for those who want to manufacture. A lot of work is going on on the Industrial Park, which is one of our flagship programmes. We also have the seaport we are working on at Agge. It’s a natural seaport. Work has already started. The engineering corps of the Nigerian Army is already building the first installations there to make it even safer.

Specific investment opportunities

Well, I have talked about aqua culture. We have done plenty of work in that sector. We have an Israeli company on ground constructing modern aqua culture farms. We, on our own, have started the construction of aqua culture villages. President Obasanjo came to inaugurate one, which is a 150-hectare farm settlement. There you have a one-stop shop for aqua culture. You have the breeding ponds, feed mills, processing plants – everything they need to do is there and we have over 500 ponds in that place. We want to replicate that in each of the eight local government areas. Work has reached advanced stages in the second local government. We have dug over 200 ponds. And we have also put in place a process to buy up all the produce and process them.

Gas reserve and fortunes for the state and Nigeria as a whole

We have the gas and energy Master Plan, and the energy hub we want to create for those who want to invest in that sector to use our abundant gas resources to power. This state has over 30 per cent of the gas and oil reserves in Nigeria – I am not talking of offshore, I am talking of onshore. So, if you are looking for investment in those areas Bayelsa is where one should be. We have set up a gas development company and we are working with both the international oil companies and the federal agencies that have control and ownership of the gas. Of course, part of what we suffer here is that we have no ownership of the resources that are deposited here and yet we suffer the consequences of exploitations. Our rivers are polluted, livelihoods have disappeared, the ecosystems are destroyed, the culture of our people destabilised, innocent traditional societies invaded and destroyed forever, and yet there’s nothing given in return.

So, those challenges are there. And then to cap it all, we have this continuous flaring of gas that you talked about, which has been going on since 1956. So, what it means is that we need investors to come in to work with us to see how we can turn this gas that has been flared and wasted for so long and put it to profitable use, which is why Bayelsa is creating the energy and power hub and we have made some significant progress.

All we are waiting for is the private sector coming in to see how we can make Bayelsa the gas and energy hub of Nigeria and the Gulf of Guinea.

Brass Free Trade Zone and deep seaport at Agge

The Brass Free Trade Zone is a very important programme that we have. There is already an approved licence for that. And we also have an approved licence for the Agge deep seaport as a free trade zone itself. I am also applying for the airport that we will inaugurate this year to be a free trade zone on its own.

We want people to come and build big warehouses, manufacturing companies to come there, airport administration to handle planes so that people can come in to do a lot of trading. That’s what we are planning.

But the Brass area is receiving a lot of attention. We have been to China to give confidence to the investing public there and we are making a lot of progress. The Brass fertiliser project is about a three to five-billion-naira project, and we are pleased that it is coming on stream. The state has equity in it. And we did so to encourage investors to let people know that not only are we inviting them to come, that these are profitable ventures and we ourselves have bought into them, so we are part of the investment. I have already given them the certificate of occupancy to the land.

So, we’ve contributed to it. And we are encouraging them to make a success of that because it will be a game-changer for us if they do – it will change the narrative. Then there is also the Brass LNG, which has been on the drawing board for a very long time, but unfortunately the Federal Government and their agents have slowed down and I think we lost a window and our case is that that project is so critical, it has to be brought back on the table and we are in touch with other players and we are hopeful that the Federal Government will also see the need to bring that project back.

Melford Okilo Memorial Hospital

Well, that was a very ambitious project that was conceived well before its time. My view is that not enough planning and seriousness in terms of job execution went into it. It actually became a drainpipe on state resources running into billions and billions of Naira, which people can’t account for.

Anyway, I am not looking back. I have devised a new way of dealing with that issue. The assurance I can give you is that before the end of this year, that place will be put into productive use.

Education levy

In order to make it sustainable even after my government, we have introduced the education development trust fund by law, by which five per cent of the IGR of the state goes into that fund and independently managed. Every worker in the public sector in Bayelsa State, and ultimately everybody working and doing business in Bayelsa State will contribute to it.

Our target is to produce between 20,000 and 30,000 young people kept in a controlled environment, trained to reason and behave and act like decent human beings, better taken care off than in their communities and families before. A number of them now, even during holidays, refuse to go home because they can’t get the sort of care they are given in our schools. We have doctors, chaplains and pastors in those schools – changing their mindset and world view and incubating them, keeping these young people at vulnerable age, that age where we can easily lose them to militancy and criminality.

Restructuring and state police

State police is a necessary element of federal system. In our multi-ethnic, multi-religious society, in a federal system, Nigeria is overdue for state policing. I am a former policeman. I know how my colleagues feel, because we are all in this federally controlled police force.

Yes, it has its advantages, but then the downside has become very, very apparent and frightening now, especially with the population explosion and the intricacies of our societies, our country has to adopt state policing. I have spoken severally in support because I am a committed federalist. That does not mean they should wind up the federal police. No, we will still have room for the federal police. But state should have the authority to handle day-to-day policing. But when we have serious issues bothering on federal offences, the state police can co-operate with federal police. So, the two can exist side by side.

All we need to do is for the leadership to be committed, meet and sit down to work out the details of the relationship and the checks and balances. There are fears on the part of those who do not want state police. But these fears can be assuaged.